Edmund Burke: “Their rising was to illuminate and beautify the world.”

The improvements of the National Assembly are superficial, their errors fundamental.

But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service.

Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbors the example of the British Constitution than to take models from them for the improvement of our own.

I think our happy situation owing to our Constitution,--but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly,--owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have…